An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion has fi­nal­ly re­port­ed to stake­hold­ers that the Cus­toms Bor­der Con­trol Sys­tem (CBCS) or ASY­CU­DA, is op­er­a­tional, but some users may still be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing chal­lenges with the clear­ance of their goods.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, the Di­vi­sion said that in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er rel­e­vant bor­der agen­cies, it is ac­tive­ly work­ing to re­solve these is­sues and min­imise fur­ther dis­rup­tion to stake­hold­ers.

Cus­toms said it an­tic­i­pat­ed full restora­tion of ser­vices by noon to­mor­row.  

In the in­ter­im, it said ef­forts are on­go­ing to en­sure the time­ly pro­cess­ing of trans­ac­tions and con­tin­ued sup­port sys­tem users.

“The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion re­mains com­mit­ted to the ef­fi­cient man­age­ment of the na­tion’s bor­der op­er­a­tions. We ex­tend our sin­cere ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and mem­bers of the pub­lic for their pa­tience and un­der­stand­ing dur­ing this pe­ri­od.”

The di­vi­sion added that fur­ther up­dates would be pro­vid­ed as nec­es­sary.

The ASY­CU­DA (Au­to­mat­ed Sys­tem for Cus­toms Da­ta) is a com­put­erised cus­toms man­age­ment sys­tem used by cus­toms de­part­ments the world over to fa­cil­i­tate in­ter­na­tion­al trade.

On June 30, the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise for­mal­ly no­ti­fied the pub­lic that the T&T ASY­CU­DA had been com­pro­mised due to wa­ter dam­age at the Cus­toms House, lo­cat­ed at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza in Port-of-Spain.  

This frus­trat­ed the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as a back­up sys­tem was put in place but there were sev­er­al dif­fi­cul­ties be­ing en­coun­tered by stake­hold­ers to ac­cess the sys­tem.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day that even be­fore the re­cent wa­ter leak at Cus­toms House, ASY­CU­DA had been plagued by weeks of tech­ni­cal prob­lems, ex­pos­ing a trou­bling lack of back­up in­fra­struc­ture or dis­as­ter re­cov­ery pro­to­cols.

He in­di­cat­ed that the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences are al­ready be­ing felt, as sev­er­al Cham­ber mem­bers re­port­ed that re­frig­er­at­ed con­tain­ers car­ry­ing per­ish­able goods re­main un­cleared, pos­ing a risk of spoilage.

Oth­ers are say­ing the cost­ly de­mur­rage fees, now emp­ty shelves, and lost sales are ma­jor set­backs to their busi­ness, Ma­haraj out­lined that this is hav­ing a cu­mu­la­tive im­pact which is dam­ag­ing busi­ness con­fi­dence and erod­ing T&T’s com­pet­i­tive­ness at a re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.

Al­so ex­press­ing con­cern was the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) pres­i­dent Dale Par­son, he said, “The ex­tend­ed dis­rup­tion of ASY­CU­DA is se­vere­ly im­pact­ing trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion and by ex­ten­sion the na­tion’s eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion are crit­i­cal at this time. Man­u­fac­tur­ers have hun­dreds of con­tain­ers to ex­port but can­not, re­sult­ing in miss­ing week­ly sail­ing sched­ules with CMA, Trop­i­cal, Seaboard, and oth­er lines—ad­verse­ly af­fect­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness.”

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TT Cham­ber) said the busi­ness group stress­es the ur­gent need for greater in­fra­struc­ture re­dun­dan­cy and ro­bust busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan­ning at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, as well as all oth­er crit­i­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tems and ser­vices.

“Strength­en­ing the re­silience of our cus­toms in­fra­struc­ture will help pro­tect the econ­o­my from sim­i­lar shocks in the fu­ture.”

Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Son­ji Pierre-Chase un­der­scored the ur­gency of the mat­ter, stat­ing, “This in­ci­dent high­lights the crit­i­cal need to strength­en busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plans for es­sen­tial ser­vices.

“Ro­bust dis­as­ter re­cov­ery and back­up sys­tems are no longer op­tion­al—they are a ne­ces­si­ty to safe­guard na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and eco­nom­ic re­silience.”